Future Florida Republican House leader attacked by PAC funded by current House Speaker
A political committee that has received hundreds of thousands of dollars raised by outgoing Republican Florida House Speaker Jose Oliva is attacking future House Republican leader Daniel Anthony Perez over a trip he took several years ago to Cuba.
Mailers and social media ads calling Perez “a Disgrace to Republicans and Our Exile Community” hit mailboxes in Miami and Facebook news feeds in recent days. The ads were produced by Citizens for Ethical and Effective Leadership, which has $400,000 since May from Conservative Principles for Florida, a political committee chaired by Oliva.
Perez and Oliva declined to comment.
The ads have caught the attention of Miami Republicans, in part because it’s unusual for an outgoing House speaker — or a PAC closely associated with him — to attack a future House speaker from the same party, much less the same county. Both Oliva and Perez are from Miami-Dade County. Both are Cuban-American.
The ads are sharp in their criticism, accusing Perez of being a “charlatan” on Cuba — a matter of intense personal relevance for Republican voters in Miami and particularly in Perez’s right-leaning District 116, where he’s facing a primary challenge this summer from Gabriel Garcia.
Perez’s district represents parts of Doral, Westchester and Kendall, majority-Hispanic communities where exile politics run deep. Perez says he is a staunch critic of Cuba’s communist government.
David Custin — a political consultant who has worked with Oliva and has been paid about $350,000 spent by Citizens for Ethical and Effective Leadership through mid-June — said in a brief interview Monday that much of the money provided to the committee by Oliva has gone toward ads attacking Miami-Dade County mayoral candidate Alex Penelas.
Citizens for Ethical and Effective Leadership reported more than $200,000 in expenses related to the Miami-Dade mayor’s race on June 18.
Another political committee, Floridians for Economic Advancement, contributed $65,000 to Citizens for Ethical and Effective Leadership on June 16. Margaret Frison, the chairwoman for Floridians for Economic Advancement, told the Miami Herald Monday night that she didn’t know whether the money funded the attacks against Perez.
“I’m going to have to look into that,” she said.
Custin referred questions about any connection between Oliva and the attack ads against Perez back to Oliva, who is known to have had differences with Perez.
“You’d have to call the speaker to ask him about District 116 and Daniel Perez,” Custin said. “I’m not authorized to speak on his behalf on that matter, or I would.”
Several different ads produced by Custin criticize Perez in both English and Spanish for taking engagement photos with his then-fiancée while visiting Cuba in 2017. The ads include photos taken in Cuba of Perez smoking a cigar and holding hands with his now-wife, juxtaposed with pictures of members of the Cuban military clashing with dissidents.
A web page created by the political committee attempts to compare Perez with former Republican Congressman David Rivera, a Cuban-American politician under federal scrutiny for accepting millions from a U.S. subsidiary of a Venezuelan-controlled oil company to lobby the U.S. government.
The ads echo attacks that first surfaced during Perez’s first run for office during a special election in 2017 to replace then-Rep. Jose Felix Diaz, who resigned in order to run for Florida Senate.
Perez’s opponent in that special election, Jose Mallea, ran ads criticizing Perez for going to Cuba after the Miami Herald first reported on the trip.
“It was to visit a family member. We did take pictures while we were there. But the main reason we went was to visit her uncle. We took food. We took medicine,” Perez told the Miami Herald in 2017. “This is Miami, and people can interpret things the wrong way. I am 100 percent against the Cuban government and everything it stands for, but I was not going to let my fiancée go to Cuba alone.”
Perez won the race by almost 10 points. Custin performed some work for Perez’s campaign during the primary race, which he said Monday was a “mistake.”
Perez won a leadership race last year to earn a spot in line to become Republican House leader in 2024.
This story was originally published June 30, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
